I admit it. I always sort of sneered at people who say handing out condoms in high school really doesn't give implicit approval to promiscuity. For one thing, it seemed to me, the pro-condom crowd always used such blatantly transparent arguments—the teenage sex is already rampant; you can't turn back the clock; kids are going to do it; we have to face reality.

Well I notice none of these people ever says we can't turn back the clock on cigarette smoking, anal sex, fatty foods, drunken driving, or violence on TV. I sometimes get the suspicion that the "you-can't-turn-back-the-clock" crowd only uses that arguments on things they secretly want to see more of—like teenage sexuality.

But I have to agree with them on one point—whatever implicit message we give kids by handing out condoms is probably dwarfed by the pro-sex messages they see everywhere else around them. And I'm not just talking MTV, blue jean commercials or the ubiquitous underwear ads that otherwise respectable department stores run daily in the papers. When I drive past my local high school I see 15 year old girls going to class in outfits so scanty you'd think they were teleported out of their bedrooms in mid-garment and beamed down to the street.

If you didn't know any better you might suppose that their mothers would be aghast at what their daughters are wearing. Au contraire. Their moms are their biggest supporters. The real minority nowadays are people like me—people who think that kids ought to keep their clothes on until they're old enough to pay their own bills and raise their own babies. When you look at what else is going on around us, condoms are the least of it.

For example. A couple of years ago my wife and I took our two sons to see an outdoor Christmas show in Eagle Rock. According to a handbill we'd seen at my son's pre-school, Santa Claus was going to hand out candy canes, which seemed like fun. It was Christmas. It was a chance to feel part of a community—a sensation you don't often get in like Los Angeles. But when we arrived, we found several hundred people watching eight or ten teenage girls on an outdoor stage wearing Batman capes and masks, black bras and briefs and very little else.

"I thought this was for little kids," said my wife.

"Me too," I said. But my four year old was already standing in the aisle staring up at the dancers in astonishment. So we stayed. When the batgirls were done, out came what looked like eight year old nymphets in satiny green costumes so sheer and satiny you could see secondary sexual characteristics they didn't even have yet. Then after them there were three older girls in
2 thin tattered hillbilly-type rags, thrusting their hips, pumping their small white arms and otherwise basking in the glory of their smooth bare shoulders and lean taut thighs.

To me the amazing part was the reaction of the moms. I thought they'd be a bit dismayed to see their little girls dusting it off like this in front of total strangers. But they were the dancers' biggest fans—one of them stood up directly in front of me and took a picture with a flash camera.

After the performance, the girls' dance instructors came out to introduce the dancers and bask in the audience's warm applause. I don't know what I expected. But it wasn't the two warm caring middle-aged dance teacher types who obviously didn't feel they'd crossed any invisible line.

"Maybe we're getting old," said my wife.

I guess we were. There was a pre-teen sexual revolution going on around me and I was so busy reading computer magazines I never even noticed. And then when I did, I felt embarrassed. It's disconcerting to see little girls trot it out and wave it around in front of 300 people. If it was Cher or Madonna, you could happily watch with lust, longing, astonishment or whatever your particular trip might be. But when you're looking at little girls doing semi- erotic dances in marginal costumes at a purported Christmas pageant it's hard not to feel a twinge that you—and the society you're a part of—are on the slippery side of some elemental divide.

Not that I wanted to turn back the clock. Little girls have a right to a happy sex life the same as everyone else. It just never occurred to me that they would want to have it in front of 300 people. When I was a kid, I once saw an item in "Ripley's Believe It or Not" about a South American girl who became a grandmother at age 14. At the time, I wondered how anything like that could ever happen. But then I went to see Santa Claus in Eagle Rock and now I understand.